148 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
12. 3 
back to 
12. 5 away. 
Away therefore 11 minutes. 
the honey, 
12.13 
12.151 „ 
8 
77 
12.25 
>> 
12.28 „ 
99 
10 
79 
12.39 
12.43 „ 
99 
11 
7f 
12.54 
12.57 „ 
97 
11 
77 
1.15 
1.19 „ 
97 
18 
77 
1.27 
1.30 „ 
79 
8 minutes/ 
&c., (fee., the way being now clearly well learnt. 
But that the sense of direction is of much service to 
bees in finding the locality of their hives seems to be 
indicated by the following observation thus narrated, on 
the authority of the authors themselves, by Messrs. Kirby 
and Spence : — 
In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out at 
every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of 
the town. Trees, trees, trees, still met me, and intercepted the 
view in every direction ; and I defy any inhabitant bee of this 
rural metropolis, after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a 
glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicularly over it. The 
bees, therefore, .... must be led to their abodes by instinct, &c. 
The observation, however, is not so conclusive as its 
authors suppose ; for there is nothing to show that the 
bees did not take note of particular objects on their ac- 
customed routes, and so learn these routes by stages. It 
would be worth while in this connection to try the effect 
of hooding the eyes of a bee, or, if this were deemed too 
disturbing an experiment, removing the hive bodily to a 
distance from its accustomed site, and observing whether 
the bees start away boldly as before for long flights, or 
learn their new routes by stages. 
In this connection I may quote the following. 
Dr. John Topham, of Marlborough House, Torquay, 
writing to 6 Nature , 5 1 says 
On October 29, 1873, I removed a hive of bees in my 
garden, after it was quite dark, for a distance of 12 yards from 
the place in which it had stood for several months; ard 
between its original situation and the new one there was a 
bushy evergreen tree, so that all sight of its former place was 
1 Yol. ix. p. 484. 
